Technology is not Culture

In the airline seat I grow restless. I watch as the teenager next to me purchases wifi to rip through Instagram, and then Snapchat. He moves faster than I could ever consume the information. When I was younger, and people would talk about their disgust for technology, it always revolved around the speed of things: shortening attention spans, more information, less human interaction. That’s how the fear of technology was explained to me.

I always thought I would be fine, that the fear wouldn’t find me, because even if I couldn’t keep up to date, I believed that I could empathize with the desire to move faster. But as I watch him, I realize that it’s not the speed at which the photos and videos fly across the screen that weighs me down, but the sheer inanity of the content: in every one it’s a picture some has taken of themselves, or a video they’ve taken of themselves. I can’t hear what they’re saying, which usually gives me solace, but in this case strips out any of the distractions. It’s one endless stream of selfies, monologues, dancing, singing, staring at food, drinking water, faces framed in landscape, cameras being passed from duck face to pouting face, and blank stares. It’s overwhelmingly repulsive, and I realize it’s not the technology that people struggle with, but the reconciliation of a culture that leaves them feeling empty and severed. And then the sadness sets in when you realize that the culture didn’t change, you did. You could have consumed this five years ago, but now it’s at best a curiosity, and at worst a terror. Culture doesn’t change, you do.

And yet technology is not culture. But it is the most effective mechanism of delivery. And in that effectiveness lives the fear, because it accelerates the alienation. And so what do I do with my repulsion? I get out my notebook, and write about myself, the biggest hypocrite of them all.